Monday, April 8, 2013

Iraq Unwilling To Confront Forced Labor And Sex Trade

For the fourth straight year, the U.S. State Department has
reported that Iraq has a serious problem with sex trafficking and forced labor.
Women and children in Iraq have been forced into prostitution. Foreign women
have also been shipped to Iraq for the sex trade, and Iraqi women have been
sent abroad as well as slaves. Many workers from abroad are also coming to Iraq
in increasing numbers with the growing economy, and that has opened up
opportunities to exploit them. Iraq has laws against both of these crimes, but
barely enforces them. That’s because the government does not consider either an
important issue.

Each year the State Department releases a report on trafficking around the world. It breaks countries up into four categories.
The first is Tier 1, which are nations that are complying with the minimum
standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Tier 2 countries are those
that do not fully comply with the act, but are making efforts to do so. Tier 2
Watch List is ones that State has questions about. That’s because the number of
victims is increasing, the government doesn’t provide evidence of its efforts,
or has only said that it would start complying with the act the next year.
Finally, Tier 3 countries do not comply with the Trafficking law at all, and
are not making an effort to do so.

Most of the Middle East and North Africa did poorly in the
2012 report. Israel was the only country in the Tier 1 category. Morocco,
Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman were Tier 2.
Iraq and Bahrain were Tier 2 Watch List. The remaining states, Algeria, Libya,
Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and Syria were in Tier 3. The region has
historically been a trade route for goods and people between Africa, Asia and
Europe, and remains so to this day.

Iraq has a growing sex trade, which is connected to
neighboring countries through organized crime rings. Women are sold within the
country, and also sent to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates, Turkey, Iran, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia for both prostitution and
slavery. There are several ways women end up in the sex trade. One is that
women are raped on film, and that is used to blackmail them. Another is women
are bailed out of prison or jail, and then forced to pay off their fines. Some
are pushed into prostitution by their family due to poverty, debts, or a need
to settle a family dispute. The two most common ways however are forced or
temporary marriages, and false job offers. In the former, women are married off
under false circumstances, usually to pay off money, and then put into the sex
trade. In the latter, women are told that they will be given work, but instead
are forced into the illegal business. There is anecdotal evidence that the
trade is increasing in Iraq. In Tikrit for example, non-government
organizations found women from Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Syria being sold to
traffickers for $1,000-$5,000 each. Women from Iran, China, and the Philippines
have also been trafficked to and through Iraq. There are several factors
contributing to the continuation and growth of the sex trade in the country.
One is the high levels of poverty, which leads to desperate decisions to make
money. Related to that is the huge number of Iraqi refugees who are in
vulnerable situations, which opens them up to exploitation. Finally, corruption
opens up government officials to bribes and collusion with gangs. Organized
crime grew during the 1990s as they were used by Saddam’s government to smuggle
goods to get around sanctions. After the fall of his regime, gangs grew in
size, as they were either associated with or grew out of militant
organizations. Today, many insurgent groups rely upon crime to finance their
operations, or have given up the fight, and have become full time gangsters.
They use their networks that were once used to smuggle in commercial goods or
weapons, to now smuggle women and children in and out of Iraq.

The huge influx of foreign workers like these into Iraq has
opened up the opportunity for some to be exploited by labor scams (U.N. Radio)

Similarly, Iraq is a center of forced labor in the Middle
East. People from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri
Lanka, Thailand, Pakistan, Georgia, Jordan, Ethiopia, and Uganda have all come
to Iraq in recent years to find work. Some of them have become indentured
workers. They are promised jobs in Iraq, but when they arrive they are
threatened, get their passports and documents taken, and are told they have to
pay off a debt before they can leave. Some are told that they will be going to
the Gulf States or Jordan, and then end up in Iraq, or have the terms of their
contract changed, and are forced to stay. Many of these people are used in
construction, security, and janitorial or domestic work. In Kurdistan for
example, there were women from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines,
who were offered domestic jobs there, but were then forced into servitude.
Nepal and the Philippines actually banned their citizens from going to Iraq,
because of these practices. Manila just lifted this ban in March 2013. Many
Arab states, especially in the Persian Gulf, have a long history of using
foreign workers, and Iraq is no different. The Iraqi government, which is the
largest employer in the country, offers robust pay, which leads average Iraqis
to demand similar wages, much higher than in many neighboring countries. That causes local businesses to turn to cheap foreign labor instead. This is
despite the fact that Iraq has a very high unemployment and underemployment
rate. Unfortunately, this large wave of migrant workers is being exploited by
some.

Most problematic for the State Department and the victims of
sex slavery and forced labor, is the fact that the Iraqi authorities do not
seem much concerned with either issue. For the last four years, Baghdad has not
provided the U.S. with hard evidence that it is trying to improve the
situation. It has a written plan to address sex trafficking, and passed new
legislation about it in April 2012, but enforcement is weak. Officials have
tried to help out some workers. In March 2012, an investigation was opened into
22 Ukrainian and Bulgarian men who were forced into working in construction,
and then abandoned by their employer in the Green Zone. Each one was paid $2,000
in compensation. The Labor Ministry also paid for some awareness programs about
sex trafficking, and occasionally there are stories about gang members being
arrested for the crime. Otherwise, little else has been done. Many prostitutes
are arrested as criminals, there are no services for victims of the sex trade
or forced labor, the government is not collecting any statistics on either
crime, nor trying to train law enforcement about them, and there are some
officials who deny that trafficking is occurring in Iraq, or claim it is not a
major issue. Iraq should have been made a Tier 3 country some time ago. It has
continued to promise Washington that it will do something about trafficking in
labor and sex, and has made some superficial steps towards doing that, which
has kept it on the Tier 2 Watch List instead. This makes it like the many other
countries in the Middle East and North Africa that have not addressed these
crimes.

Iraq has a growing problem with the sex and labor trade.
Sanctions and wars devastated much of Iraqi society. That created millions of
poor and displaced people who are open to exploitation in the sex market. Women
from other countries have also been shipped to or through Iraq by the wide
range of criminal organizations that exist within Iraq and the region. Iraqi
women have also been sent abroad as prostitutes. On the other hand, the
decrease in violence has now allowed the economy to grow, and there is a demand
for workers. Instead of using the huge pool of out of work Iraqis, many
companies have instead turned to foreigners that they can pay less money to.
They too are open to manipulation, because it is easy for an employer to seize
their documents, and then blackmail them to work in return for the promise that
they will be allowed to leave the country eventually. Corruption and the
government’s lack of interest have allowed both of these practices to increase
in Iraq. Until there is political will to deal with these two problems, they
are likely to continue in Iraq, and flourish just like they do in the rest of
the region.

SOURCES

Department of State, “Trafficking In Persons Report,” June
2012

Iraq Business News, “Filipinos can now Work in Iraq,” 3/8/13

Tijara Provincial Economic Growth Program, “Assessment of
Current and Anticipated Economic Priority In Iraq,” United States Agency for
International Development, 10/4/12

2 comments:

When talking to my colleagues and friends there, I always found it very challenging to get anyone to admit that human trafficking or the sex trade were happening at all in Iraq. No one seems willing to admit this to themselves. Some might be willing to accept that this is the fate of many of the Filipino women who are trafficked through Iraq, but they are certainly not willing to accept that this could happen to women in Iraq.

And yet, at the same time, men still demand sex and pay for sex with sex workers...

That's the general feeling I've gotten from the reports I've read from the State Dept. Every now and then a gang will get busted for trafficking, but otherwise very little is done, because the authorities just don't seem to care.

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Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com